Chapter 11
Graduation from Bona School
Being with Grandpa
and Grandma full time was a real shift in my lifestyle from that little
farm. I guess I considered myself a “town
boy”—although you want to remember that the population of Bona, Missouri was a
total of twenty-one people! I had my own
little bedroom on the ground floor just off my grandparents’ bedroom. That was handy because if I wanted to go to
the outhouse at night, I could just go out the window without bothering them.
It took some
adjustment. At first I was homesick for
the rest of the family. I had slept in
the same bed with Richard all my life.
In the beginning it was kind of lonesome without his body warmth and
without his kicking or poking me once in a while. It was strange when I woke up in the mornings,
too, but I soon got used to it.
It was a time of
rapid development for me—both mentally and physically. It made me feel independent or maybe I got
that from Grandpa Stanley because I had heard it said that Charley Stanley was “as
independent as a hog on ice.” That eight
months was also the time that I suddenly shot up to my full height of almost
six feet. My mother was to be astonished
when I arrived in Vancouver after only eight months and having grown a good six
inches. I grew fast but more up than out. I was slim and later when I joined the Navy I
still only weighed 137 pounds soaking wet.
It was a delight
being at Grandpa’s store all the time.
After school and on Saturdays I swept the bare wood floors for him with
a mixture of sawdust and oil to pick up the dust and leave an oiled finish on
the wood. Before long I was helping wait
on customers. I could pop paper sacks open
with a flourish just like Grandpa did and weigh out pinto beans, flour,
etc. I also tended the chickens that
Grandpa took in trade. They were kept in
a chicken house out back until Grandpa made his weekly trip to Springfield and
took the chickens, eggs, and cream to market, then picked up supplies for the
store.
It was helpful to
Grandpa and Grandma that soon on Saturdays I could tend the store while Grandpa
went to the house for lunch and Grandma did not have to come trotting across
the yard. Sometimes she tended the store
and I was allowed to go along with Grandpa either to Springfield or to Aldrich
where things like chicken feed came in on the train.
Best of all, since
I had been driving our old Model T Ford for nearly a year, Grandpa taught me to
drive both the truck and their Chevrolet sedan.
The only trouble I had was learning to shift gears since the gears in a
Model T are handled entirely with your feet and the gas lever by hand. I caught on quickly however, and by
Thanksgiving Grandpa would let me drive the car by myself for short rides.
On one occasion
when Grandpa was busy on a Saturday, he actually sent me in the truck by myself
to the depot in Aldrich to pick up a freight shipment for the store. I was proud as a proverbial peacock. When I got to Aldrich, I drove grandly up and
parked in front of my Uncle Merritt Stanley’s garage ostensibly to visit while
I wanted for the afternoon train, but partly to show off for my cousin Charles
who was not allowed to drive yet.
I got my comeuppance
on the way home however. When the train
came I loaded the truck—handling sacks of chicken feed and bran mash was easy
after all those bales of hay I had bucked for Ben Long—and was doing fine until
I got to the foot of the long hill leading up into Bona. The truck engine stalled when I shifted down
and I could not get it started again. I
finally had to suffer the embarrassment of hoofing it up the hill admitting
that I was stalled.
Fortunately, my
older cousin Leon Frieze who was a real truck driver at the time was at the
store and he hiked back with me. He finally
figured out that it had something to do with the coil and got it going for me. I decided then and there that I was going to
learn everything is to know about engines.
The time with
Grandpa and Grandma was not all work. I
had plenty of time to get out with my friends and many cousins. I would go duck and quail hunting with Claude
and Billy Todd. Once I went bird hunting
with my cousin James Lowell and two of our Kansas City cousins, Ennis and Buddy
Fulkerson. James and I must have shot
the birds that day because Ennis and Buddy were Kansas City kids and neither of
them could hit the broad side of a barn.
In those days I
was ambitious to be a cowboy singer and I itched to buy a Gene Autry
guitar. There was a real beauty in the
Sears & Roebuck catalogue that only cost three dollars and ninety-eight
cents—and that included an instruction book and song book. Mother sent me a little spending money once
in a while and Grandpa sometimes paid me for extra work around the store. I had a secret hiding place in my bedroom and
in it saved nearly all of my money until I had five dollars, then I sat down
and ordered that guitar.
It was a great day
for me when the mail carrier delivered my new guitar in a big flat cardboard
box. Grandpa showed me how to tune it by
sounding the right notes on Grandpa’s parlor organ and adjusting the strings. I must have driven the two of them half-crazy
sitting there evenings twanging away practicing chords. Grandma finally gently asked if I could
practice in the afternoon when they were both at the store!
I never did get to
be much of a guitar picker but it was fun to fool around with. Later on Grandma told my mother that she had
to go into the bedroom for a good laugh one day when she overheard me telling
Billy Todd, “Why, I have only been through two lessons so far and I can already
play ‘Red River Valley!’”
Although he was an
excellent fiddler, Grandpa was not much help to teach me because he played the
fiddle entirely by ear. He could do a
lively rendition of “Marching Through Georgia”, “The Wabash Cannonball”’ and
things like “Amazing Grace” but he was at a loss to show me how to read a sheet
of music.
Grandpa did not
mind if I experimented with his fiddle occasionally so once in a while I would
fool around with it and got so I could handle simple tunes in the key of
C. Before I left for Vancouver in 1937 I
could do a fair job on either the guitar or fiddle with things like “Red River
Valley” and “Springtime in the Rockies.”
